Never Neverland
by La Guera
Summary: Most moments in life pass unremarked but some shape those that come after. Locked in a room with whom he hopes is Sam, Dean stands watch with a gun, a bottle of Beam, and four moments.


Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, places, and events are property of Erik Kripke, Robert Singer, the CW, and Warner Bros., Inc. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.

**A/N:** This story contains spoilers for S1 and S2. Read at your own risk. It was written for the From the Ashes Challenge and inspired by Black Sabbath's "Heaven and Hell".

_February 1984_

Dean watches Sammy pull himself up on the arm of the recliner and debates with himself whether or not to say anything to Dad, who is a across the room on the couch, nose buried in a book. He can't read the title, but he knows it's important because Dad has barely looked at either of them since he brought it home from the rummage sale this morning. Even Sammy, who can usually get Dad to drop everything and come running, can't get him to so much as blink. Now is a perfect example; any other time, if Dad saw Sammy pulling himself to his feet with the arm of the recliner, he'd be lunging for his wobbly, diapered butt and telling him to be careful. But now he just turns the page and chews on his ragged thumbnail the way he does when he's thinking really hard. Like he used to when he and Mom discussed grown-up things in the kitchen.

But thinking of his mom makes his insides twisty, like that time Bobby McCabe dared him to eat a worm that Dad had bought for fishing. Bobby had told him it tasted like chicken and dared him not to be a sissy baby, so he'd picked the worm out of the bait cup and swallowed it whole. It had wriggled on the way down to his tummy, and he'd thought he was going to throw up. He'd felt sick the rest of the day, and then Bobby had told him that the worm was gonna have babies and clog up his insides until he exploded like a salted slug. He'd told his mom what Bobby said at bathtime that night, and after yelling at him for eating the worm, she'd promised him that the worm wasn't going to clog his insides with babies because it was dead. The thought of a dead worm rotting in his stomach had made him barf on the bathroom rug, and the next morning, he'd been okay again.

But that's still thinking about Mom, and his insides are getting twistier than ever, so he pushes Before away and focuses on Sammy. In the end, he decides not to say anything to Dad because he probably won't care anyway. He hasn't cared about much of anything since their house caught fire and Mom disappeared in the smoke. He just reads his books and leaves him and Sammy alone with Aunt Judy while he goes on trips to nowhere and brings back more books and diapers and stupid plastic soldiers that are all he gets to play with anymore.

Last month was his birthday, and he'd thought that Dad would notice him then, maybe want to play catch with the new bat and baseball he'd gotten for Christmas. The birthday before that had been great. Mom's tummy had been big with Sammy, but she'd fixed him his favorite breakfast, and they'd all gone camping in the cabin Dad sometimes rented. It'd been too cold to fish, but they'd made S'mores in the fireplace, and Dad had bought him a pair of boots just like his, only smaller, and ruffled his hair and promised him that next year, he might get an air gun.

But this birthday was terrible. Mom was gone. Aunt Judy had tried to make him pancakes, but she put too much syrup on them and burned the bottoms, and eating them had made his tummy heavy and rumbly. Dad had given him a Twinkie instead of a birthday cake, and then he'd ruffled his hair without really looking at him and roared off in the old truck without saying goodbye. He'd come back after dark with a bag full of books, diapers and formula for Sammy, and a bag of plastic soldiers and a squirt gun for him.

"Happy birthday, Dean," he'd said, and then he'd smiled, tired and sad, and gone into his room and shut the door.

Dean had filled the gun in the bathroom sink and squirted at his reflection in the mirror until Aunt Judy had made him go to bed. He'd lain in the dark and listened to Sammy fuss at his new teeth in the crib.

This is making him think of Before again, and that isn't fair. He doesn't want to think of Before because that will make him want it, and even at five, he knows it will never come back because Mom took it with her when she went to live with the monster. Before lives in Heaven now, with Dad's smiles and his patience and whatever it is that makes Daddies love their little boys.

Sammy doesn't know it's gone, and that's why he keeps trying to get Dad's attention with grunts and squawks. He's pulled himself to his feet, and he's wobbling like the ground is too soft to hold him up. His fat, baby fingers dig into the fabric of the armchair to keep him from falling onto his poochy, diapered butt. There's drool on his chin, and he's staring at the backs of his own hands like he's not sure how they work. Maybe he isn't. He is just a baby. He squawks at Dad, but he doesn't look up.

"Good job, Sammy," Dean says. Somebody might as well pay attention.

He figures he knows what Sammy's up to; he's been pulling himself up on things for a couple of weeks now. First, it was the coffee table, and then it was the tablecloth on the desk in what Aunt Judy called the vested mule. Sammy hadn't stood up that time, but he had pulled the phone on top of his head, and that, at least, had gotten Dad's nose out of a book. He'd scooped Sammy off the floor and carried him into the kitchen, where he'd walked him back and forth and sung songs to make him stop screaming. He'd stayed with them in the room that night, slouched in a rocking chair beside the crib to make sure that some guy named Sid didn't come for Sammy in the middle of the night.

Sammy looks over at the sound of his voice and smiles. His chin is shiny with drool, and Dean can see the barest glint of teeth peeking from his wrinkly, pink gums. His butt swings in a big, unsteady circle like a pendulum, and Dean is sure he's going to lose his balance and either eat the arm of the chair or butt-splash the floor, but somehow, he hangs on and stares proudly at him with big, brown eyes.

Dean holds out his arms. "C'mere, Sammy," he croons.

Sammy's eyes get even wider. "Ba-bat," he says, and Dean wonders if he's asking him a question.

"C'mon, Sammy," he coaxes, and wiggles his fingers to entice him.

Sammy smiles even wider and lets go of the chair arm, and Dean hold his breath and waits for the crash, but Sammy just bobs and sways and grins at him. Finally, he takes a tiny baby step towards him, arms raised and hands fisted at either side of his face. Another step, bigger this time, and now Dean is holding his breath for an entirely different reason.

Dean wants Sammy to make it to him more than anything in the world, more even than the air gun Dad had promised him last year. He thinks that if Sammy can close the distance from the armchair to where he is, he'll bring a piece of Before with him. Sooner or later, the sounds of his crinkling diaper and Dean's encouragement will get through to Dad, and he'll have to look up, and when he does, he'll forget all about the dusty old book in his hands. The terrible spell under which they've fallen since Mom went to Heaven on a monster's burning tongue will be broken, and they'll all live happily ever after.

He wants it so badly that he has to pee, and he shimmies a little to make the urge go away. Sammy thinks it's a game and laughs, starts dancing, too. He wobbles like one of the Weeble people Dean used to play with at home on the floor of Sammy's bedroom, and Dean's heart stutters inside his chest.

_Don't fall, Sammy, _he silently pleads with his baby brother. _Please don't fall. You can make it._

Sammy doesn't fall. He keeps coming and giggling, shrieking in triumph at every successful step, and Dean keeps his arms open and outstretched. He even leans forward a little to lessen the gap. From the corner of his eye, he watches Dad, and he chews his bottom lip. He has to look up and see this at any time now. He has to see it for the magic to work, but Dad just keeps reading in spite of all Sammy's gleeful shrieking and chirping. He and Sammy could be in China for all he seems to notice. Panic joins the ghost worm in his gut.

Sammy is less than four steps from him when Dad says, "Dean, get me pen."

For one wild moment, Dean thinks that he's finally noticed, but when he turns his head, Dad is still buried in his book.

"Dad," he says. If Sammy's squawking won't get his attention, then it's up to him to make him see.

"Now, Dean," he says, and Dean knows better than to argue.

"Yes, sir." He slithers out of the chair and leaves behind Sammy, who clucks in amazement and stops in his tracks to stare at him.

_Hang on, Sammy, _he thinks desperately, and races into the vested mule for the pen Aunt Judy keeps there to take messages. It lies on the edge of the table, and he snatches it in his sweaty fist and spins on his heel. If he's fast enough, Sammy might still make it.

He's almost back to the living room when he remembers that when he was little, Mom had taped him taking his first steps. He remembers because Mom had shown the video at a family reunion once, and he'd seen his baby self toddling towards the big Tonka dump trunk in the middle of the kitchen floor. He dimly wonders who will tape Sammy's first steps now that Mom isn't here. It's a heavy question that slows his steps.

The too-grown-up thought is still with him as he charges into the living room with the pen in his hand. Sammy, wonder of wonders, is still on his feet. His hope is still alive, and in a moment of unthinking joy, he shouts, "Dad!"

It's all over after that. Sammy, who had been grinning earnestly at him, blinks and wobbles and plots onto his butt with an airy _pfft. _He looks at him in blank confusion and then begins to cry.

It's the crying that gets Dad's attention, and when he looks from Sammy to him in mute inquiry, the disappointment is so huge that Dean can't breathe. There are worms in his tummy and an elephant on his chest, and he wants to bawl just like Sammy. The spell isn't broken because Dad didn't see Sammy carrying Before on the bottoms of his booties. They're still stuck in Now, this terrible place with no time that the light never seems to reach, and always will be.

"What is it, Dean?" Dad asks. "What's wrong with Sammy?"

He shrugs. "He fell down," he says dully, and hands him the pen.

Behind him, Sammy's wail sounds like an accusation, and after a few minutes, he sits cross-legged on the floor and plays patty-cake and peek-a-boo until he stops. Try as he might, Dean can't make himself disappear.

_September 1989_

The cramped, hotel-room closet doesn't smell right, Dean thinks, and shakes his head to clear it. It's a stupid, pansy thought to be having right now. Well, anytime, really, he amends, but especially now, when Dad is off on a hunt and he's holed up in a closet with a shotgun in his sweaty hands and his baby brother huddled beside him, all knees and elbows and wide, rabbity eyes. Sammy elbows him in the ribs in an effort to get closer, and Dean shifts on his heels and swears.

"Shit," he says, and shifts on his heels to escape the bony point.

"You're not s'posed to cuss, Dean," Sammy says, and Dean can't resist a smirk of satisfaction at having gotten away with it.

"So what?" he whispers into the dark. "You gonna tell on me? You do, and I'll fart on your face. Now shut up, stupid. You want it to hear you?" Sammy shuts up.

In truth, he has no idea what "it" is. All he knows for sure is that he heard a noise outside the window, and when a quick peek through the thin, ratty hotel curtains hadn't revealed its source, he'd herded them into the closet. Dad had left him in charge of Sammy, had made it clear that he was responsible for his baby brother's life, and he can't afford to mess it up. Dad says the first weapon of any good soldier is preparedness and his willingness to trust his instincts, and Dad knows what he is talking about because he's been a soldier for a long time now.

Dean isn't about to let him down. Dad had left him with a pat on the back and a shotgun full of silver bullets in case the werewolf he'd been tracking came for them, and then he'd disappeared into the Nevada darkness. He isn't sure when Dad will be back, or even _if _he will, but when he does come, dirty and sweaty and reeking of silver and rock salt and the hunt, he's going to find both him and Sammy in one piece.

"Fuckin'-A," he mutters to himself, and says it again because he likes the way it sounds. Brave and manly, just like Dad. "Fuckin'-A."

Sammy stirs restlessly beside him. "You're not s'posed to say that, either, Dean," he says, and Dean can almost hear the glee in his voice at the prospect of telling Dad that not only had Dean cussed while he was gone, but he'd used the F-word, the Holy Grail of Bad Words. Little weasel was probably wetting his pants in anticipation.

He takes one hand off the barrel of the gun long enough to thwap Sammy in the back of the head. "Shut up, dingleberry," he sneers. "You're such a snitch goody-goody, you know that? Why you worry so much about what Dad thinks? He's not here, so who cares if I cuss? 'S'not like the monster's gonna hold me over the sink and wash my mouth out before he eats me."

Sammy isn't listening to him. He's too busy rubbing the spot where he'd thumped him and glaring at him in wounded indignation. "You hit me," he whines incredulously. I'm gonna tell."

"You are not," he answers smugly, but deep down, he's not sure of the little brat's silence. In fact, Sammy looks serious. As serious as a basset hound can look, anyway, all furrowed brow and pooched lips and brimming eyes. If there was room in the closet, the little turd'd probably be folding his arms.

"Uh huh," Sammy says resolutely, and Dean knows there's nothing else for it.

He sighs and lays the shotgun across his knees, the barrel pointing away from Sammy and towards the opposite wall. "You do," he says, solemnly, "and I'll Indian burn you 'til you scream uncle."

"No, you won't," Sammy retorts, but Dean is pleased to note the distinct lack of confidence in his voice.

"You wanna bet?" He lunges and seizes Sammy's skinny forearm. Sammy shrieks, a high, girlish squeal, and tries to pull away, but Dean is four years older and thirty pounds heavier, and it's really no contest. He tightens his grip around Sammy's forearm until his palm is flush with the skin and begins to twist back and forth.

_Like that Boy Scout video on how to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together, _he thinks as Sammy's skin prickles and warms at the insistent, vicious friction.

"Ow, Dean, ow, OW," Sammy screams, and thrashes in his grip. "OwowowowOWOW. Deeaan, please," he whimpers, and Dean realizes that he's crying.

"Say 'Uncle,'" he commands, but the sport has gone out of it now, and he just wants it to be over.

"Uncle! Uncle," Sammy blubbers, and Dean releases him with a final shove and takes refuge on his side of the closet.

Sammy's watery sniffles are the only sound in the cramped space, and with no new sounds from outside it, Dean's mind begins to drift. He thinks again that there's something wrong with the way this closet smells, and that bothers him for reasons that he can't explain.

It doesn't smell like mothballs, for one thing. He and Sammy have lived in a lot of hotel rooms since Dad left Aunt Judy's one day in June, not long after Sammy's first birthday. No matter how fancy or crummy the motel, the closets all smelled the same-like the wattles of your grandma's neck after Sunday service or Sammy's butt after a diaper change. Powdery and stale, with a hint of sawdust. Like a lumberyard or a fresh pine box. Dad said it was because hotels put a bucket of drying agent in them to keep mildew and bugs out.

Not this one. This one smelled sour, unwashed dog fur and vomit-soaked pencil shavings. He'd noticed it when they'd first checked in, and Dad had shrugged it off as a possible slab leak beneath the closet floor, but Dean wasn't sure. Water wasn't this _nasty_, this rank. He thinks maybe it was pee or stale beer that somebody had spilled. That hadn't been what he'd told Sammy, though. He'd told Sammy there was a dead body hidden behind the closet wall, rotting and running to fat and crawling with worms, and that when he was sleeping, the worms would crawl into his mouth and nose and slither into his stomach to make babies there until he exploded. A little souvenir from Bobby McCabe to him. He'd kept at it until Sammy was crying and Dad had threatened to bust his ass if he didn't quit. He'd shut it right quick, but it was too late for Sammy; the idea had taken root, and Sammy had spent their first night in the room peering fearfully from beneath the raggedy covers and whispering that he felt the worms crawling all over him, Dean, get 'em off.

Har de har. The joke had been on him.

Even their closet back home in Kansas had smelled like pine shavings, he remembers now for no reason at all. Before Sammy had nestled in Mom's belly and taken up all her time and attention, she'd played hide-and-seek with him, and one of his favorite hiding spots had been the big, walk-in closet in his parents' bedroom. It had been endless and deliciously dark, and the sharp scent of pine needles and sawdust had been everywhere. At the time, he'd assumed it was from his parents' clothes-Mom's fur coat and Dad's array of flannel shirts. The smell of grown-up. He'd liked the smell once because it had reminded him of safety and home, but now he hates it because it's the smell of Never-Neverland and the poisoned spell they live under.

His favorite smell now is axle grease and warm dog, and the only place to find those smells in that combination is Uncle Bobby's body shop. When they stay there, which is not often enough in his opinion, never often enough, Uncle Bobby lets him and Sammy sleep on a grubby mattress in the supply room. It's covered in Bobby's dirty shirts and oil-stained rags and holds in its lumpy, dirty fabric the stink of cars and honest work and old dogs. He and Sammy lie beneath an old quilt, and he breathes in the wonderful, mysterious smells and listens to the rhythm of Dad's voice as he talks to Bobby in the next room and for the click of unclipped dog-claws on the warped, wooden floorboards.

Sometimes Bobby's old dogs come in for a look and a sniff, and sometimes they sniff his hair with their dry, cracked noses, chase their skinny tails, and plop their stinky butts next to his head. He isn't so fond of this because nothing can overpower axle grease like the stench of a ripe dog fart, but the outbursts are rare, and the dogs make comforting noises as they settle into age and sleep. Occasionally, they settle in on Sammy's side of the mattress, and on those nights, he prays for a bout of doggie indigestion. What are little brothers for if not to share the misery?

Now and then, he wonders what life would be like if Sammy had never been born. It makes him ashamed, because Sammy is pretty good for a twerpy little brother, but he can't help it. If there had been no Sammy, then Mom never would've been in the nursery, and maybe she would never have gone with the monster to Never-Neverland.

Beside him, Sammy whimpers as though he knows what he's thinking, and Dean feels a stab of guilt in the center of his chest.

"It'll stop burning in a minute, you big baby," he says.

Sammy sniffles and opens his mouth to answer, but a noise from outside catches Dean's attention, and he clamps a silencing hand over Sammy's mouth. Sammy mistakes the gesture for another act in this game of cruelty and bites him.

"Dammit, Sammy," he hisses through gritted teeth. "I hear something."

Sammy stills immediately, and Dean removes his hand and curls it around the barrel of the shotgun, which is cold and heavy in his lap. He picks it up in both hands and prepares to aim should the need arise. His heart is pounding inside his chest, and he imagines that he smells silver drifting from the barrel of the gun like smoke.

"I don't-," Sammy begins in a trembling voice, but then he stops, because he hears it, too, now, the soft, snicking click of dog claws on wood. Just like Uncle Bobby's dogs. Except Uncle Bobby's dogs are in Kansas.

"It's the werewolf, isn't it?" Sammy asks, and it's almost conversational, but from the corner of his eye, he sees that Sammy has curled into a tight ball, knees drawn to his chest and arms locked around his knees. He's trying to hide.

Dean swallows with a dry click and doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. Sammy is smart like that. Another click and a long, measured scratch. The werewolf is testing the front door, and Dean pictures its snout in his head, grey and hairless and wrinkled like diseased meat. It wouldn't be dry like the noses of Bobby's friendly, old dogs, but wet and hot. It's just as sensitive, though, maybe more since werewolves have the advantage of eternal life, and he knows it can smell them, two bites of boy in a rank hotel closet, wrapped up like Happy Meals.

Dean raises the gun to his shoulder, and as he does, he realizes two things. The first is that the closet is too short to hide them once he takes aim. The double-barrel will peek through the accordion doors and give them away. If he fires, he'll only get one shot.

The second is that he doesn't want to find out what life is like without Sammy. He's his little brother, and it's too late for God or anyone else to take him back now.

"It's okay, Sammy," he says, but he doesn't know any such thing, and his hands are greasy and slick on the shotgun.

The clicking comes again, louder this time, and faster, and then the door rattles in its frame but doesn't give. Sammy mewls and tries to scrabble deeper into the closet, but there's nowhere else to go. Dean swallows a mouthful of sand and concentrates on keeping his hands steady, and he realizes that he's never had to pee so badly in his life.

Another, more forceful bump, and Dean hears the creak and groan of giving wood. It occurs to him as he sits in a closet, clutching a shotgun years too heavy for him that if they die here, the last memory Sammy will have of him is an Indian burn on his forearm, a spite mark. What if, when they die, that keeps him from being able to go with Sammy into the afterlife?

That's a horrible, paralyzing thought. He's been looking out for Sammy his whole life, and he doesn't want to give it up now. _I'm sorry, Sammy, _he thinks. _I'm so so sorry. I didn't mean to be a shit. I'm sorrysorrysorry._

The werewolf outside the hotel room door doesn't give a shit that he's sorry. The door gives way with the crash of splintering wood, and Dean squeezes the trigger and feels the shotgun buck in his hands. The sound is enormous, and for a moment, he can't hear. It's like a giant hand has dunked him underwater. Then he can, and he knows with simple certainty that they're going to die, that when Dad comes back to this room, all he's going to find are a puddle and splash of blood and clumps of their hair.

The werewolf is coming, and all he can do is watch because his hands have gone to sleep. He can hear Sammy screaming, screaming to shoot it, Dean, shoot it, and he can also hear the werewolf's claws. Not snicking like Bobby's dogs, because the floor is cheap, industrial shag, but plucking like snapping guitar strings.

_Home is where the snick is, _he thinks stupidly, and that's all he has time to think before the werewolf's head disappears in a gout of blood. Something wet and sticky hits his face, and he reaches up to wipe it off. His fingers come away red, and there's a fragment of bone on the end of one finger.

He looks at the werewolf carcass still twitching and pumping blood onto the ugly carpet and wonders how the hell that happened. Had he fired a second shot? No. One shot was all he was good for, and then the silver in his gun had migrated into his mouth, where it still sat, hot and bitter on his tongue.

"Dean," calls a voice, harsh and ragged, and when he looks up, Dad is in the doorway, smoking shotgun still aimed at the dead werewolf. His eyes are wide and wild.

"Dad," he croaks, and then Dad is rushing at him, stepping over the body on the rug like it was just a dead cockroach and not a monster with teeth and claws big enough to eat him with.

"Dad, I-," he starts again, and tenses, sure that Dad is going to kick his ass for being such a pansy, but then Dad is pulling him into a hug and groping for Sammy, who scuttles forward and buries his head in Dad's sweaty armpit.

"Are you boys all right?" he demands, and tightens his grip.

Sammy mumbles "yes" into Dad's t-shirt, but Dean doesn't answer. He can't because his nose and throat are clogged and choked with the smells of wool and grown-up, smells that for a moment, have regained the power to reassure.

"Dean," Dad says urgently, and gives him a little shake.

"Yes, sir," he manages at last, and startles the hell out of himself when he starts to cry. A minute later, Sammy joins him.

_June 2000_

Dean's knuckles are white on the steering wheel, as if he's gripped it so tightly that the bones have pushed through the skin. The atmosphere inside the car is silent and heavy. Sammy sits beside him in the passenger seat, but Dean thinks he's riding with a ghost. Or a memory. Sammy is long gone and going further with every spin of the Impala's tires.

He can pinpoint the exact moment that Sammy had made up his mind.

"No, Sam, you're not going," Dad had said, and Dean had seen the writing on the wall. The minute you told Sam he couldn't do something was the minute he decided it was a done deal.

"Yes, Dad, I am," Sam had retorted defiantly, and slammed his acceptance letter to Stanford onto the kitchen table hard enough to wobble Dean's empty glass. "I've spent my whole life doing what you told me, and now I'm finally doing something for me. I've earned this. I want my own life."

"I know you have, Sam, and I'm sorry, but I need you here."

For once, Sammy hadn't given a shit about what Dad had wanted or needed, and twenty minutes later, he was headed down the front steps of their rented house with his letter and a duffel bag. He hadn't even said goodbye as the screen door had banged shut behind him. Dad had stormed into the living room to bury his sorrow in demonology, and he had grabbed the car keys from the kitchen counter and followed Sam.

He'd caught up with him a quarter-mile from the driveway, and for a while, he'd shouted out the window at him to stop and talk about this, the tires creeping over the blacktop. But Sam had refused to discuss it and just trudged stubbornly down the highway, boots crunching on the gravel shoulder.

Dean had known then that he was beat, but he'd tried anyway, had coaxed Sam into the car with the promise of a ride to the Greyhound station. He's still trying, dammit, and still steadfastly ignoring the army-surplus duffel lying across Sam's knees like a sleeping dog. He racks his brain for something to say, but talking has never been his strong suit, so he reaches over and turns on the radio instead. Thin Lizzy screams into the quiet cabin, and he loosens his grip on the steering wheel to play air drums against the leather he conscientiously oils once a week.

"Aw, yeah," he says too loudly even with the ear-bleeding volume of the music. "Now that's what I'm talking about." He casts a sidelong glance at Sam, who sits, stonefaced, with his fists buried in the zipped guts of the duffel bag dog. "C'mon, Sammy, admit it. It doesn't get better than this," he screams, as though volume will translate to a conviction he doesn't feel in his leaden stomach. "You're gonna miss this at that tight-assed college of yours." He taps the steering wheel hard enough to hurt, and the pain radiates up his arms and settles over his heart.

Sam scowls and him and then abruptly leans forward and snaps off the radio. "No, Dean," he says matter-of-factly to the window, "I won't." The surety in the statement deepens the hurt throb in the center of Dean's chest.

"All right, so you won't," Dean answers nonchalantly. "I gotta admit they play a lot of crap on that station. I mean, yesterday, I think I caught some ELO. I mean, what the hell is that, right?" He offers Sam a conspiratorial grin, but Sam doesn't return it. He just snorts and stares at him with sad, dispassionate eyes.

Dean flounders and then says, "But you know you'll miss the hunting."

Sam stiffens, and his eyes harden. "No. I won't." Spoken with absolute finality.

Panic flutters in his guts. Hunting is the one thing he and Sam have ever had in common. In every other respect, they've been two sides of the same coin. Sam was the quiet one, the smart one, and he was always the boisterous, rabble-rousing one who'd just as soon fight as hug. Light and dark, night and day. The only things they'd both shared were a last name and a knowledge and love of killing things that went bump in the night.

Now they're down to one, and that last binding tie is fraying fast.

_Worms in my belly, _he thinks.

"So that's it, then? You're just gonna walk away, and to hell with me and Dad?"

Sam snorts and slouches in his seat. "Not everything is about you and Dad."

For an instant, the rage is so complete that he's tempted to pull over to the side of the road, yank Sam out of the car, and kick the shit out of him until blood spatters on the asphalt and gravel. Ungrateful fucking shit. It's always been about him from the day he was born, and since the day Mom died, he's been the one looking out for him, making sure he knew he wasn't alone in the world. Dad might've been too damn busy to notice Sam, but Dean had always watched him, always kept himself between the monsters and the only good thing he had left.

"So me and Dad, we don't matter, is that it? We're just your embarrassing hick family."

Sam blinks. "Dean, no-."

"No, Sam, I get it. It's fine," he says brusquely and fixes his eyes on the road in front of him.

"Christ, Dean, haven't you had dreams, plans that don't involve hunting?"

Sure, he has. He used to dream of going to technical school and learning to repair cars, of owning a restoration shop in Dallas, or maybe L.A. He'd pictured girls in thongs and margaritas by the surf. But he had given them all up to protect Sam, and now he was telling him that it didn't matter.

"Yeah, Sam, I did. Hell, everybody has dreams, but this is reality, and in reality, you have responsibilities you just can't walk away from."

"Like what? Dad's old enough to take care of himself, and so are you. Hunting is not my life, Dean. It's just not."

"Whatever happened to that kid who cared what Dad thought?"

"He grew up, Dean."

"You know what? Fuck you. Do what you want. I don't care." Oh, but that's a dirty lie.

Neither one of them says another word until they pull into the Greyhound station. "We're here," Dean announces, and keeps his gaze locked on the windshield.

Sam shifts in his seat, but doesn't get out. "Dean." Awkward.

"Don't," he answers coldly. "Just don't. I told you I don't care."

Sam stares at him a moment longer, then sighs. "Goodbye, Dean." He opens the door and gets out, and Dean sees a flash of green as Sam swings the duffel over his shoulder.

Gravel crunches, and Sam stands there, waiting for him to say something, anything in reply, but he can wait until Hell freezes over for all Dean cares. He's wasted his last breath on Sam. Finally, the door closes, and Dean watches him trudge into the station with the bag over his shoulder, looking for all the world like a soldier boy going to war. Ever the Boy Scout, Sam holds the door for a bedraggled woman and two toddlers, and Dean can't suppress a bitter laugh.

He knows he should go, but he waits outside the station. He has to see if Sam's really going to do it, if he's going to kick the Kansas dust from his heels and leave him to fight the monsters alone. Twenty minutes later, Sam emerges from the station with a ticket in his hand and heads for an idling bus. He stops when he sees the Impala, and Dean thinks-hopes-that he's changed his mind, but he doesn't move towards the car. He raises his hand in a diffident wave. Dean doesn't return it. He curls his fingers around the steering wheel and waits.

Sam gets on the bus and doesn't look back, and when his jacket has disappeared inside the bus, Dean lets out a rattling breath.

"Son of a bitch," he says thickly, and he's not sure if it's anger or relief that cracks his voice.

He doesn't want to think about it, and so he peels out of the station and heads to the liquor store for a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. He drinks it in one sitting in the front yard of the rented house that he'll never call home, and when he's finished, he tosses the empty bottle out the window and takes deep, blurry satisfaction in hearing it shatter. In the morning, he'll pick up the glittering shards so they won't damage the tires.

He sleeps in the car so he doesn't have to see his own emptiness reflected at him in his father's haggard, unshaven face.

_August 2004_

Five years later, the ghost of Sam Winchester sits beside him in the passenger seat again, and the sense of déjà vu is so strong that Dean has to concentrate to keep his attention on the road. Sam's hands are fisted in the fabric of a duffel bag just like they were five years ago, only this one is brown, not green. The same stony silence. The same white-faced determination. The same oppressive tension.

Dean reaches over and turns on the radio, and even that simple gesture, he thinks, is a blast from the past. Eric Carmen is singing about being all by himself, and he snaps the radio off with a hasty flick of his wrist. That's probably the last song in the universe Sam needs to hear now, considering he just watched his girlfriend be immolated by a ball of fire on their bedroom ceiling.

"Crappy tune," he mutters apologetically. "Sorry."

Sam doesn't answer. He hasn't said a word since they left the smoldering house he'd shared with Jess in the Impala's rearview mirrors, and Dean suspects he's still seeing red everywhere he looks. The red of the fire engines parked on the lawn with their hoses strewn over the grass like guts. The red of the flames that had consumed her. The red of her blood that had dripped onto his forehead like the passing of a curse. Red, red, everywhere.

_Redrum. Redrum. _There is no humor in it.

In the early morning light, Sam looks just as dead, too white, almost bleached. The skin around his eyes is especially blanched, as if it has worn away entirely and left bone in its wake. His head lolls against the passenger window, but the rest of him is strangely wooden, and Dean inexplicably thinks of Gipetto and Pinocchio taking a roadtrip to Never-Neverland. That thought is even less amusing, and he crushes it ruthlessly.

He has never considered himself a genius-that has always been Sam's job in the family-but he's watched enough Dr. Phil to know that he should say something and draw Sam out of the cocoon in which he's wrapped himself. Problem is, he doesn't know what the fuck _to _say. He's pretty sure that this is one Life Sucks Moment that Hallmark is never going to cover. In fact, the only person on the face of the planet with any experience with this sort of thing is currently M.I.A.

Besides, Dr. Phil or not, there's one thing he _does _know: saying he's sorry won't make a damn bit of difference, won't change a damn thing. After Mom died, all anyone said was how sorry they were. It had practically been a goddamned Gregorian chant. _I'm sorry for your loss. Sorry. So sorry. _Sorry hadn't fixed a goddamned thing. Mom had still been lost, and Dad had still been hollow, and all the sorrow hadn't coaxed the angels that were supposed to protect him out of hiding. In fact, sorry was pretty fucking useless.

For what it's worth, he is sorry. As much as he resents Sam for leaving him in the family shitpit while he ran to California and breathed air that didn't smell like blood and ass, he never wanted this for him, never wanted to see Dad's old nightmares and obsessions taking root in his face like some twisted inheritance, but that's exactly what's happening. Sam had tossed the double-barrel into the trunk just like Dad had done on the morning they'd fled Kansas and driven into the gaping, endless mouth of Never-Neverland.

He's sorry for himself, too, because Sam's presence in his car is irrevocable proof that there's no escape. After Sam had left, Dean had thought there was a chance that he could leave, too, someday, put down his guns and pick up a beer and a torque wrench. Maybe he could settle down with a babe and a dog and just fucking _be._

But now he knows that that's a pipe dream and always was. There's no getting out of Never-Neverland. All the stars have winked out, and there's no light to guide them to someplace like home. He's going to drive down these highways and backroads until the day that he dies, and maybe it won't be over even then. Maybe he'll become one of the things he's always hunted, a phantom car trawling the roads in search of the unwary, and he'll run them down because they had the audacity to live the live he never got. It could go on for years, maybe forever if a hunter doesn't come along with more vengeance than mercy in his heart.

"Sam," he says. "You wanna eat?"

The only part of Sam that moves is his lips. "Just drive, Dean," they say.

Dean keeps driving. That's one thing he's always been good at, and he isn't hungry anyway.

Never-Neverland swallows them whole.

_May 2008_

It's Sammy's twenty-fifth birthday, and it's also very likely his last, but if it's any consolation, Dean probably won't see thirty, because today is the endgame. Either both of them will walk out of here and the Demon will be dead, or neither of them will, and the world is fucked. Dean is mildly surprised to find that his only emotion when confronted with this stark reality is profound relief. It'll all be over soon, one way or another.

He is not surprised that the final showdown in happening here, in the old supply room where he and Sammy had once slept surrounded by the smell of motor oil and old dog. In fact, it's perversely fitting, even if it does taint the one happy place he has left from his childhood. He suspects that's exactly why the Demon chose this place to make its stand. It can leave no goodness uncorrupted.

He sits in the corner with a pile of dirty rags beneath his ass to cushion it, and takes a pull from the bottle of Beam he found in Bobby's cupboard. It tastes like kerosene, flat and gone over, but with any luck, it'll get him drunk enough to do what he has to. Because he knows he can't shoot Sammy sober. Even if the Sammy that comes back to him has yellow eyes and no soul and Hell in his dead heart.

He also knows that there's a better than good chance he won't be able to do it no matter how drunk he gets. He might just sit here with the Colt in his jittering grip and watch Samferatu advance on him until it's too late. If that happens, there's no one here to save him. Bobby is dead, stiffening in his destroyed living room. Sam killed him after their exorcism attempt had failed, snapped his neck with a sound like dry kindling broken over a knee.

_Not Sam, _he tells himself, and takes a swig. _The Demon._

It had come for him again in New York City, slipped in unawares after a visit to a roller of bones in Harlem. Sam hadn't told him directly; Dean supposes it was his way of protecting him rather than a conscious effort to deceive. He has to believe that because the alternative hurts too much to consider.

Dean had noticed something was wrong anyway. The headaches, the nightmares. Sometimes, Sammy had refused to sleep for days, pacing the hotel rooms and staring out the windows with red-rimmed eyes. When Dean had asked him why, he had replied, "Because I'm scared of what I might do," and the simplicity of his answer had raised gooseflesh on Dean's arms.

The Demon had manifested itself in Vermont during a woman-in-white hunt. Nothing flashy, just a glint of yellow eyes while Sam was busy pouring salt over the bones of Jenna Liddy, who had last walked the earth as a mortal woman in 1936. Dean had pretended not to see, and when Sam was in the shower, he'd spiked his Coke with enough Unisom to fell a rhino. He'd hog-tied him in the backseat of the Impala and driven straight through to Lawrence, turning up on Bobby's rickety front porch with three days of No-Doz on his tongue.

Now that it's all over and hindsight doesn't matter, he wonders if that's what The Demon wanted all along. The botched exorcism and everything that came after proved that it could have kill him any time it wanted, could've reached up from the backseat with Sam's hands and driven his head into the steering column hard enough to shatter his skull and splatter his brains over the interior. But it hadn't. It had simply lain in the backseat and let him think that he had a snowball's chance in hell of making this right.

He and Bobby had done everything right, had double and triple-checked the sigils and seals and mouthed the Latin phrases until they rolled like Lynyrd Skynyrd lyrics off his tongue. He'd even taken the extra precaution of having the holy water he'd cribbed from the church fount blessed a second time by the unsuspecting priest. Just in case the sin of stealing it had diluted its demon-scourging power.

The Demon had toyed with them for three days, had let them think that their dousing had chanting had been doing _something. _And they'd both believed it hook, line, and sinker. Bobby because he hadn't understood what they were up against, and Dean because he'd been desperate. Bobby can be excused for his ignorance, and even if he can't, he's paid the highest price for it. But he should've known, dammit; he'd faced it twice before, first in the guise of Dad, and then with Sam. Bobby'd been there for him and Sam that time, too, and he'd saved the day, but it looks like they're fresh out of miracles, because Bobby isn't around to play white knight anymore, and neither is Dad. He's all alone, and he has a shitty track record when he's by himself.

If he thinks about it-and what is there to do but think now?-it's like that night in a Nevada hotel room, when he and Sammy had hidden in the closet with a shotgun full of silver bullets and prayed the werewolf wouldn't find them. Everything is the same. Except the werewolf lying in wait isn't wearing matted fur and a hairless, grey snout. It's wearing Sammy's face. Dean knows every line and groove in that face because, aside from a few years when Sammy was a prodigal son, he's watched it grow into what it is. He's watched in envious disbelief as it wheedled impossible information from nurses and nuns and coeds alike. Hell, he's watched Sammy give hope to the dying. He also knows that if he lets The Demon walk out of this room with Sammy's face, no one will suspect or resist it until it's too late.

The Demon let the charade go for three days, three days in which Sammy got progressively weaker, and then it had simply stood up and snapped Bobby's neck. It would've snapped his, too, had been in the process of doing so, when he'd uttered the magic word: _Sammy._ The childhood endearment that he'd once stubbornly refused to use on the grounds that Sam had betrayed him and no longer deserved to hear it. His resistance hadn't lasted long-by the second week on the road after their reunion, he had been Sammy again, then and forever-but staring at his brother and feeling his windpipe crumple, it had been the only word in his mouth, etched on his dying tongue in fire.

It had been enough. Sammy had stirred behind those yellow eyes, the man behind the curtain, after all. He'd dropped him and left him wheezing on the floor, not far from where Bobby stared at the ceiling while the rest of him faced the floor.

"Dean," Sammy had said, and then his eyes had rolled in their sockets, and he'd wilted to the floor.

Dean had dragged him in here and sealed them both inside. He didn't know why, and he still doesn't. Because it's safe, he supposes, the place with the most love in it. It's the place where he and Sammy slept on a lumpy mattress and were comforted by the smells of dirty shirts and dirtier dogs. There's no place like home, and this was the closest he could come to it.

Maybe he's fooling himself. Maybe it's different for Sammy, and there isn't enough love in this room to make a difference. Maybe for Sammy, home is someplace else, the house he rented with Jess, or maybe the Stanford green. Maybe he would've had a fighting chance somewhere else, but it doesn't matter because if he tries to move him, they'll never make it to where they're going,

So he sits here with the Colt he knows he can't fire and a bottle of Beam. There's another gun beside him, too, an old Glock, but that one's not for Sammy. It's for him. He'd realized somewhere along the way that the road out of Never-Neverland is on the end of a bullet. The muzzle flash is the star that will guide him home if it comes to it, and he thinks it will, because Sammy is tired of fighting, never wanted to fight in the first place. And the truth is, he's tired, too.

So, he prays. He prays for brown eyes, not yellow, but mostly, he prays not to gag when he tastes metal and cordite in his mouth. Everything has changed since that night in a Nevada closet. Everything but one. He doesn't want to know what life is like without Sammy in it.

"C'mon, Sammy," he murmurs. "C'mon, Sammy." And in his mind's eye, he sees Sammy letting go of Aunt Judy's armchair and toddling towards his outstretched arms.

He sits in the corner that smells most like old dog, and waits for Sammy to open his eyes.


End file.
